Alien Diplomacy (49 page)

“Because you’ve landed yourselves into one of the bigger conspiracies going, and you’re all targets for assassination. Your missing and presumed very dead teammates are proof of that. How the rest of you are still alive is beyond me, but unless you go into some form of protective custody, you’re not going to be alive much longer.”

No one spoke for a moment, so we all heard the sound. It sounded like someone had dropped a heavy tin can. And then another. And another.

“Incoming!” Jerry shouted. “Grenades!”

T
HERE WERE MANY TIMES
I’d been grateful that A-Cs had hyperspeed, but none so much as this one.

“Into the limos! Shields on!” Jeff bellowed just before the first grenade went off, as he grabbed me, pulled me to him, and shielded me with his body.

It was a stun grenade, at least to judge by the fact that we all fell to the ground but weren’t hit with shrapnel or even falling debris. It felt like the world was shaking, my vision was barely there, my ears were ringing, and I was disoriented. The calm part of my mind mentioned that this still wasn’t as bad as any gate transfer when I was pregnant.

The dogs were all howling in pain. That the A-Cs weren’t was the surprise. Or rather, that one A-C wasn’t.

Jeff had been knocked down just like everyone else. But he recovered almost immediately. He leaped to his feet and picked me up off the ground, one arm around my waist. He went to the super hyperspeed, grabbed Reader, and flung the two of us inside the limo, onto White and Gower, who seemed to be recovering, though not as fast as Jeff had.

I got onto my knees on the seat as Jeff went back, flung Tim over his shoulder, grabbed Chuckie and Kevin, and tossed them all in on top of us. I just managed to avoid getting buried under the falling bodies. Jeff picked Len and Kyle up off the ground and flung them into the front seat.

He slammed the doors shut then raced over and tossed the flyboys into their limo. I could hear him, and he was shouting orders, in full-on Commander Mode, getting the other A-Cs up and moving.
Each agent had a K-9 unit or two and dragged them into the nearest limos. Jeff grabbed Ishmael, who’d managed to hold on to Prince, and headed them for the nearest limo, which was the farthest from the one I was in.

I saw the laser shields go around our limo and the others, one by one, presumably indicating the human drivers were recovering, at least enough to hit the shield buttons.

Jeff was moving so fast he’d done all of this in about five seconds. A part of me marveled that I could see him at the super-duper speed. Most of me was just hoping he’d be fast enough to get inside one of the limos before the next grenade went off. Because while it was horrible, we’d heard at least three drop, and I knew only one had exploded. So far.

“Everyone able to see and hear?” Reader asked. There were fast assents. “Good. Len, you able to drive?”

“Yeah.”

“Then get ready to get us out of here as soon as Jeff’s in a limo. Kyle, get on the intercom and send that order to the other cars.”

I thought everyone was in a limo, so in relative safety, but as Jeff tossed Ishmael into his limo, Prince yanked away and raced off. I saw where he was heading—for one of the remaining grenades. And I didn’t think they were going to be as benign as the first one.

“Prince! No! Come here!” Hey, he was already my buddy. I tried to get out of the limo, but White and Gower grabbed and held onto me and I couldn’t.

Jeff saw the dog and didn’t hesitate. He ran and picked him up, as though Prince were a Pekinese instead of a German Shepherd. Which was great. Only they were now far from any of the limos.

I tried to see if they’d gotten away from the remaining bombs—only the world blew up around us.

T
HE EXPLOSION WAS LOUD,
and it shook like nothing I’d ever felt before. It was horrible, in a completely different way from the stun grenade. I could tell the remaining grenades had gone off at the same time, or close enough, but it felt like the whole world had exploded.

The noise was incredible—even louder than my screams, which were at the dog-only register. It rattled us even inside the laser shield. I almost bounced out of White and Gower’s hold, but they both clamped down, and I couldn’t get away to get out to Jeff.

“Let me go! Jeff’s out there!”

“We can’t go look for him until this stops,” Gower said.

“Why not?” I was still screaming and felt no need to stop.

Chuckie got over to me, took my face in his hands, and forced me to look at him. “Calm down. Right now,” he said sternly. “You can’t help him if you’re hysterical, and none of us can help him until it’s at least somewhat safe to get out of the car.”

“But—”

“Stop it! You don’t panic, you don’t freak out. You stay calm and in control until it’s all over and everyone’s safe. Then, and only then, do you get the luxury of freaking out, melting down, or losing control.” He was quoting my mother. She’d taught me, him, both of us, that. Mom had been in this situation many times before. And she’d trained us to handle it when we were teenagers.

I took a deep breath. It was shaky, but I shoved the hysterics away. Because Chuckie was right—I couldn’t help Jeff if I was a mess. I nodded.

Chuckie let go. “We can get out in a few seconds. Then we’ll find him, get him to medical, and it’ll be all right, Kitty. I promise.”

As the ringing from the explosion subsided, there was another sound. It reminded me of metal creaking. Big metal creaking in the way it does when it’s been stressed too much and isn’t going to be holding on much longer. “I know that sound. That’s a bad sound.”

“Let’s get Jeff and that stupid dog and get the hell out of here,” Tim snarled.

My hand was heading for the door handle when it opened. Prince was flung in and on top of me, meaning White was on the bottom of our dog pile this time. The door slammed shut. “Kid, do what the Head of Airborne said, and get us the hell out of here.”

Prince was lifted off me and placed rather gently on the floor. Jeff shoved everyone into seats and pulled me onto his lap. Kyle was on the intercom, passing along the “leave now” orders.

Len floored it and raced off, the other limos hightailing it out of there with us, as chunks of concrete started falling. They bounced off of the limos. The taxis weren’t so lucky. I hoped Ishmael and his crew had good auto insurance.

Jeff looked fine, a little mussed up, but there was no blood I could see. I did the whole pat-down thing. Nothing seemed broken, out of place, wet, or otherwise harmed. “You’re alive.” I managed to say this without bursting into tears. Just barely.

He hugged me. “I’m okay, baby. And so’s the dog. Who’s too brave for his own good.” Jeff patted Prince’s head where he thought I couldn’t see. “I was able to get us behind a bearing wall away from the blast. My ears are still ringing, and I’d bet his are, too, but otherwise, we’re just fine.”

I looked behind us. The garage was collapsing. “There were more bombs, besides the grenades they tossed in for us, weren’t there?”

“Yeah, baby, there were. They rigged every floor. Triggered, as near as I could tell, by the bombs on our floor.” He shook his head. “You called it right, I think. Whoever’s targeting you realized the former cops were getting too close.”

“I think it’s because they did their thing at the Paraguayan Embassy after sniffing around Titan, but we can hash it out at home.” My body started to shake, and Jeff hugged me tighter. I leaned against him, listening to the sound of his double heartbeats, and allowed myself to tremble—my heart was definitely racing more than his. After a bit, his double heartbeats soothed me as they always did and my body began to relax.

“What are we going to do with them?” Kevin asked as we barreled for home as fast as the traffic would allow us. The other limos were coming along, sticking close, not that I could blame them. Conveniently, we did have plenty of underground parking.

“They can room with their hero, Mister Joel Oliver. They can sleep in the Jolly Green Giant’s underground chamber. They can be detained in Dulce, at East Base, or NASA Base. But they are not going home, because if they do, they’re dead, and we all know it.”

“I’ve run their backgrounds,” Kevin said. “All of them are single, either never married, widowed, or divorced. None have a live-in girlfriend or partner, either. Have put protection onto the ex-wives, none of whom live in or around this area. None have children.”

“That’s a really odd statistic.”

Chuckie nodded. “It is. We’ll dig a little further, but if we’re talking a dozen men with no wife or partner at home, that’s indicative of a carefully selected team.”

“I have a feeling they were doing more than standard K-9 stuff when they were on the force. Which may be both why they were cut and why their Chief let them keep their dogs.”

“Not that they’re overly impressive,” Tim muttered.

“Not by comparison to what we’re used to, I’ll give you that. But for guys who seem to have limited resources, they did okay.” I was shaken up, but not stupid. Ishmael’s guys had fooled us all, more than once so far, and we weren’t the only ones. “Chuckie, how many Embassies do you think actually fell for their gas leak routine?”

“From what my teams told me, all of them other than Romania and, clearly, Paraguay. Our team was not allowed into the Paraguayan Embassy. They merely handed them the surveillance equipment and slammed the door shut.”

“Nice.”

“Yeah.” Chuckie looked at Jeff. “By the way Martini, thanks for saving us. All of us.”

“I’d say it’s all in a day’s work, but that’s not true anymore.” Jeff shot Chuckie a half-smile. “Thanks for calming my wife down.”

Chuckie shook his head. “She wasn’t calm and she isn’t calm, and you know it. But controlled, clearheaded panic is one of her specialties.”

“I’m right here, guys.”

Jeff hugged me as the other men started discussing potential strategies and how, or if, they should read Ishmael’s team into the highly classified data that was our daily lives. “Yes, you are,” he
whispered in my ear. “Right where you belong. With me, in my arms.”

He’d just been manly and protective and all around amazing in the extreme, and I’d thought he was hurt or maimed or worse. And somehow, he was here, safe and sound, not only acting like it was no big deal but also managing to be incredibly romantic.

I didn’t care that we were in a car stuffed with other people and one big dog. I flung my arms around his neck and kissed him. And I kept on kissing him until we parked and everyone else got out of the car.

After all, what was the point of surviving death if we didn’t at least get to make out heavily?

W
E MIGHT HAVE GONE FOR IT
in the back of the limo, tons of people around or no, but someone rapped on the window, then opened the door.

“Girlfriend, we have a timeline.”

Jeff ended our kiss slowly. “I demand diplomatic immunity.”

Reader snorted. “Right. Tear each other’s clothes off later. Like after we’ve saved whoever the hell the assassination target is tonight.”

“Sometimes I really hate you, James.”